Earlier this month, the White House announced a decision to suspend all military aid to Pakistan—such aid has amounted to billions of dollars—for its active support for the Taliban and affiliates of al-Qaeda. The editors of the Weekly Standard applaud the decision:

Pakistan zealously backs our enemies even as it takes our money. . . . Pakistan supplies the Taliban with arms and with territory for training camps. We know this because Taliban commanders have freely said so. Pakistan arms the al-Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani network, responsible for many deadly attacks in Afghanistan. Although the Haqqani headquarters in Waziristan [an area of Pakistan that borders on Afghanistan] is well known, and although the Pakistani military has conducted antiterrorist operations there many times, the group remains unmolested. . . .

Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for appalling terrorist attacks in both India and Afghanistan, openly operates recruitment centers throughout Pakistan. It was Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 2008 suicide attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people over the course of three days, [including a Chabad rabbi and his pregnant wife]. As for al-Qaeda itself, it’s no coincidence that Osama bin Laden’s compound was in Abbottabad—the home of Pakistan’s military academy. . . .

But withholding money, however sensible, isn’t enough. We will have to impose other and more severe penalties. This begins with naming and sanctioning Pakistani government officials and entities who support jihadist groups. Depending on the behavior of the Pakistani government, it might include a more fundamental change: formally designating Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. . . .

Such a step might lead Pakistan to deny the United States use of its territory for Afghan operations, which will require our forces to use the Russian-influenced territories to the north as bases of operation. But the region will not cease to be the globe’s jihadism nerve center until Pakistan ceases to see [jihadism] as a tool of the state. Just as our weakness and naïveté encouraged the country flagrantly to disregard American interests in the first place, a progressively tougher stance toward Pakistan’s terrorism backers will produce geopolitical benefits elsewhere, We may not be able to pry Pakistan from its paranoid dependency on jihadism, but we don’t have to fund it, either.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.